Analyzing options for (Greenfield) New Implementation on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP S/4HANA (on-premise) and SAP S/4HANA Cloud, Private Edition

S/4HANA Cloud is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering from SAP which provide the following advantages:

• Highly Standardized business processes for selected LoB’s and industry scenario
• Best practices supporting quick value realization
• Multi-Tenant Cloud, running in SAP Data Centers
• Applies Clean Core Concept by design
• Extensibility options with SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP)
• Fast Innovation Cycles leading to increased responsiveness to market changes
• Subscription Contract

The system landscapes used for SAP S/4HANA implementations Cloud and On-Premise include:

Manage your implementation and landscape with SAP Cloud ALM.

SAP Cloud Identity is the default identity provider for SAP S/4HANA Cloud and provides secure authentication and single sign-on for users in the cloud.

SAP Central Business Configuration (CBC) is a Configuration hub for SAP S/4HANA Cloud. It’s a service of SAP Business Technology Platform where you provision your SAP S/4HANA Cloud systems (Starter, Quality, and Production), activate the business scope, and complete configuration-related activities. Configurations are moved from CBC to SAP S/4HANA Cloud through transports. SAP CBC is used by customers after go-live to continue to maintain their SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution by activating new scope, countries, and making configurations.

The starter system includes the Enterprise Management scope and comes with preconfigured business processes and master data. The data and configuration in the starter system directly aligns with the scope item test scripts in SAP Signavio Process Navigator.

The quality system is provisioned and configured via CBC based on the data and requirements gathered during the Fit-to-Standard workshops. After your S/4HANA system is live, the Quality System will act as a test environment for further configurations. After thorough testing, extensions can be transported from quality to production using the Software Collection transport SAP Fiori apps in S/4HANA Cloud. Other activities that are not managed by transport management are done directly in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud quality system.

The production system is provisioned via the CBC and kept in sync with the Quality system via weekly or bi-weekly transports. Same as in quality system applies to not transportable configuration. The guided workflow tasks in the CBC instruct the implementation team members when to make these configurations in the production system. After go-live, the production system is used by end users to run the organization's business processes.

Subscription based tenant for testing innovation without impacting the Q or P Systems, without transport path.

All SAP Best Practice Solution Scenarios provided by SAP are available in SAP Cloud ALM for Fit-to-Standard workshops. They can be selected and then the required solution processes and diagrams can be added to the project scope. If the customer conducted an evaluation with the Digital Discovery Assessment tool, he can use the result (excel report) to upload the scope directly into SAP Cloud ALM.

With SAP Central Business Configuration integration, you can use SAP Cloud ALM as the guiding system. You get an order in which the tasks need to be executed and seamlessly navigate to SAP Central Business Configuration. The configuration tasks can be loaded, so that central project management can be improved. These tasks can be used to navigate to the SAP CBC project to execute the tasks. Status information is fed back into SAP Cloud ALM.​

SAP Central Business Configuration is designed to provide guidance for your implementation project by controlling the sequence of activities that are completed. In the project experience, you can manage your team members, complete activities to set up and configure your systems, and view the project status. Activities are grouped into phases, and each phase ends with a milestone.

The configuration activities in SAP Central Business Configuration are designed to support customers in adapting the preconfigured SAP Best Practices content to their requirements. The available configuration activities are based on the active scope and country selections. Configuration activities may vary by country, because not all business scenarios (scope items) are available in all countries. Configuration activities can be mandatory, recommended, or optional.

As SAP S/4HANA Cloud is offered directly through SAP, it benefits from the many user- friendly services within the cloud portfolio.

A 3-system landscape is also available as an option if customers require a Development system for SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

The test automation tool is integral part of SAP S/4HANA Cloud. With preconfigured test scripts you can automate your business process tests. You can further change existing or create new test cases via the recording functionality. In addition, improved regression testing is supported by SAP delivered test automates on app level.

With the Manage your test processes app, you can create and manage test processes that represent the business processes in an organization. A test process, or multiple processes must be added to a test plan in the app, test your processes to execute the actual test in the system. The implementation team works with customers to build test plans with the standard test processes, and modify test processes to align with any extensions or customizations made based on the Fit to Standard workshops.

The test processes available in the manage your test processes app are based on the scope enabled in your system, as each test process automate aligns directly with a business process (scope item) active in your system. The test process automates are essentially automated versions of the test scripts you find in SAP Signavio Process Navigator to manually test the business processes in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.

SAP Cloud ALM allows the preparation and execution of manual and automated test cases. The Best Practice content provides standard manual test cases that can be imported into SAP Cloud ALM to accelerate the preparation process. With integration to the Test Automation Tool for S/4HANA Cloud, when scoping a solution process which has automated test cases in the Test Automation Tool, this automation test case will be automatically synchronized and can be executed directly in SAP Cloud ALM.

• Utilize Feature to keep track of your Configuration, Key User and Developer Extensibility changes in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. ​

• Easily assign your released transport requests to a feature​.

• Manage dependencies between different collection types by bundling dependent transport requests in one feature​.

• Simply use the Feature Traceability as a starting point to decide about next steps like forwarding and importing transport requests​.

SAP Roadmap SAP Activate for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition provides guidance for all process phases from Discover to run. Selected ones are described below:

Business Driven Configuration Questionnaires are used as a reference during the Fit-to-Standard workshops. Answers are used to foster discussion to help identify backlog items and requirements needed for the solution realization. All backlog items and delta requirements are defined and documented in each workshop. There can be multiple waves for each Fit-to-Standard workshop depending on the complexity of topics.

Business Process Experts execute scenarios demonstrated during the Fit-to-Standard workshops in the Starter System

All process flows, backlog items, and delta requirements are reviewed and validated for completeness after being defined during the Fit-to-Standard Workshops.

Handover of requirements and process flows to expert teams and delta requirements are reviewed and converted into backlog items.

All backlog items are reviewed and consolidated into one Backlog. The scope for the first implementation phase is determined and items descoped are documented for future implementation phases.

In this New Implementation scenario also called Greenfield, customers implement a new instance of SAP S/4HANA (on-premise) by moving either from a non-SAP legacy system or from an older SAP solution. In this scenario, customers can refine their business processes, focus on key innovations and start adopting new cloud based solutions. Customers may only want essential master data and transactional data from their existing solution, such scenario will be described in the lesson 'Understanding System Conversion'.

The tool for deploying SAP Best Practices in an SAP S/4HANA private cloud or on-premise system is the SAP Solution Builder. The focus of the Solution Builder is on solutions. A solution contains a set of SAP Best Practices scenarios which are predefined process flows for a particular line of business or business area. Scenarios consist of one or more building blocks, which are self-contained, and reusable entities that include customizing settings and/or master data steps.

Best Practices are only activated once in the development system. Transports are used to provide the quality and production systems with the business configuration defined in the development system.

All of a customer's business processes documentation live in the central library in Solution Manager called Solution Documentation. When customizing SAP Best Practices to a customer's requirements, do not edit the SAP Best Practices directly. Make a copy and edit the copy. Additional customer-specific content and supporting documentation is also created and maintained in Solution Documentation.

The SAP Business Technology Platform provides developers with a modern extensibility framework and enables developers to implement loosely coupled extension applications securely, thus implementing additional workflows or modules on top of the existing SAP solution they already have. All standard SAP solutions are offered with in-app customizing capabilities. For additional customer requirements, the SAP Business Technology Platform extension capability can help developers build, deploy, and operate their new functionalities easily and securely in on-premise or cloud SAP solutions.

Extensibility in SAP Business Technology Platform is divided into three suites:

Extend and optimize business processes in your existing applications and simplify development with low-code tools to create innovative applications faster.

Deliver consistent, personalized, and unified user experiences across business applications and multiple channels at scale.

Automate repetitive and manual tasks with digitalized workflows and robotic process automation bots.

Predefined process content packages designed for specific lines of business and industries enable you to implement customizations quickly and easily.

Learn more about services in the Extension Suites in the SAP Discovery Center.

The Cloud Connector facilitates secure communication between SAP cloud solutions and protected on-premise networks that cannot be accessed directly from the internet and acts as a reverse invoke proxy component that is installed and runs on an on-premise network. Cloud connector is used in hybrid scenarios where cloud applications must access or extend on-premise software.

Compared to the approach of opening ports in the firewall and using reverse proxies in the DMZ to establish access to on-premise systems, the Cloud Connector offers the following benefits:

• You don't need to configure the on-premise firewall to allow external access from SAP BTP to internal systems. For allowed outbound connections, no modifications are required.

• The Cloud Connector supports HTTP as well as additional protocols. For example, the RFC protocol supports native access to ABAP systems by invoking function modules.

• The Cloud Connector lets you propagate the identity of cloud users to on-premise systems in a secure way.

• Easy installation and configuration, which means that the Cloud Connector comes with a low TCO and is tailored to fit your cloud scenarios.

• SAP provides standard support for the Cloud Connector.

The Realize phase is where the configuration activities are performed. In this phase all requirements identified in the Explore phase are built and tested. This generally happens (implementation approach specific) using an agile development approach in SAP Activate.

Agile development refers to developing and delivering work in small, consumable increments. The unit to measure progress and cross team alignments is called a sprint. A sprint is a time- box to organize your implementation and development efforts to serve the purpose of incrementally building the solution.

To support agile development, you can leverage SAP Focused Build, which is a ready-to-run tool integrated with SAP Solution Manager for managing agile projects. SAP Focused Build has no additional cost, and supports building the solution in short, time-boxed sprints, with frequent inspection points by the customer.

Focused Build for SAP Solution Manager in the SAP Help Portal.

The SAP Solution Manager Test Suite is used to manage and execute testing for SAP solutions on-premise. You can plan the scope of testing required for cross-system business processes, manage the tests centrally, and execute those tests.

The SAP Solution Manager Test Suite supports:

• Manual and automated functional tests

• Tests for SAP and non-SAP solutions

• Functional tests for on-premise, cloud, and hybrid solutions

• Automated change impact analysis of maintenance activities to reduce test scope based on software changes and smart calculations

• New requirements triggering semi-automated test planning for user acceptance tests and functional integration tests

• Supports agile development approach within requirements-to-deploy process through Focused Build for SAP Solution Manager

• Seamless integration with project management, process management, change and release management, defect and incident management, and custom code management components of SAP Solution Manager

• Full transparency into the test status and progress for all involved parties with test suite analytics

• Integration with third-party test tools

SAP and Tricentis have expanded their existing partnership where all customers with an SAP Enterprise Support agreement will be entitled to use Tricentis Test Automation for SAP as a term license. This will benefit customers in facilitating an easier transition to SAP S/4HANA and the intelligent enterprise.

Tricentis Test Automation will be available for all SAP customers under their SAP Enterprise Support contract. The partnership between SAP and Tricentis includes a reseller agreement, which enables customers to easily expand the test automation to enterprise test management that includes non-SAP components, by adopting SAP Load Testing by Tricentis, SAP Change Impact Analysis by Tricentis, or SAP Enterprise Continuous Testing by Tricentis.

• Manage your cloud solutions with SAP Cloud ALM and/or SAP Solution Manager

• Manage your Test Strategy with Tricentis and SAP Cloud ALM and/or SAP Solution Manager

• Manage Test Automation with Tricentis Test Automation for SAP

• Automate beyond SAP products with SAP Enterprise Continuous Testing by Tricentis

• Perform load and volume testing with SAP Load Testing by Tricentis

When compared to SAP S/4HANA Cloud (public cloud) implementation, SAP Fiori deployment is an additional consideration for new implementation of SAP S/4HANA on-premise. This is an activity that the project team must include part of the user experience strategy to identify any gaps with SAP Fiori apps not available inside of the standard solution.

Planning for the user experience is covered in more detail in this openSAP course How to Deliver a Great User Experience with SAP S/4HANA). Follow the full course to get a full understanding on how to plan and deliver SAP Fiori UX as well as to get access to info and accelerators that can be used in implementations.

An additional consideration when implementing on-premise solutions, is sizing of the hardware. The size of the hardware and database is influenced by both business aspects and technological aspects. This means that the number of users using the various application components, and the data load they put on the network, must be taken into account.

With the help of SAP Standard Application Benchmark results at www.sap.com/benchmark, statements can be made as to CPU consumption and memory consumption of particular software components.

For sizing, we have identified three different and independent sizing models. The first two, user-based sizing and throughput-based sizing, have been implemented in the Quick Sizer.

We defined three types of active users who work with the system to a different degree. Merely counting the users can be done quite easily. The estimation is quite rough as it says very little about the actual throughput these users produce.

This model is quite thorough as it calculates sizing on expected throughput. Assumptions in business terms (for example, number of order line items per year) need to be cross-checked against the individual installation.

The according tests are done in a customer system with customer data. The disadvantage is that conducting these tests requires considerable time and money. For further information please refer to the white paper Carrying Out Customer Performance Tests.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition is a cloud-based solution with traditional characteristics known from On-Premise deployments.

• Full Scope and Coverage: Full functional SAP S/4HANA scope including LOB and industry processes

• Investment Protection

  • System conversions and brownfield migrations into the cloud

  • Application and technical operations out of ONE hand

  • Safeguarding prior investments into SAP systems

• Flexibility and Extensibility

  • Access to SAP S/4HANA Extensibility Framework

  • Side-by-side and in-app extensions

  • Code enhancement and code modifications

  • Expert configuration (full IMG access)

  • Scalable platform

• Cloud Scalability and TCO

  • Elasticity, resilience, and TCO of hyperscaler infrastructure

  • Technical operations done by SAP

  • Upgrades performed by SAP on customer request

The primary steps of a new implementation for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition are:

• Software Installation: SAP provisions a new SAP S/4HANA instance in the cloud

• Preconfiguration Content Activation

  Customers can choose one of the following preconfigured templates as a base for deployment:

  • SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA

    • SAP Best Practices packages ensure system design uses a 'fit-to-standard' approach and accelerates the speed of implementation by providing a set of standardized business processes.

    • SAP activates the selected SAP Best Practices process for the customer.

    • The scope is preconfigured and based on the related package in SAP Signavio Process Navigator.

  • Enterprise Management Layer (EML) for SAP S/4HANA

    • The EML provides ready-to-run, preconfigured, localized core templates based on pre-activated SAP Best Practices.

    • The EML is structured as a 'fully-activated appliance', where the system configuration is compressed into an image that can be quickly and easily deployed. The system is immediately consumable with full documentation of all business processes.

    • The EML is the successor of SAP Model Company for Multinational Corporations.

    • SAP installs the preconfigured EML appliance, which includes 43 country versions and the scope defined in the SAP Signavio Process Navigator. Additional templates can be activated by request at an additional cost

  • SAP Qualified Partner Packaged Solutions

    • Partner-created best practice templates built on top of empty systems are qualified by SAP to ensure the solutions are proven and repeatable.

    • The predictable implementation timeframe and cost reduces risk, and includes implementation accelerators to shorten the deployment time.

    • Find an SAP-Qualified Partner-Packaged Solution, Software Configuration.

    • Configure and design the new SAP S/4HANA instance based on SAP best practices.

• Initial Data Load

  • Transfer the business data needed to run the new system by loading master and open transactional data from the legacy system.

  • The SAP S/4HANA Migration Cockpit facilitates migration of legacy data to the target SAP S/4HANA system. Two types of data are migrated.

  • Master Data: Core business objects such as activity, cost center, bank master, customer, and supplier.

  • Open Items: Open transactional data such as financial balances, sales orders, and purchase orders.

The SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition system landscape is as follows:

SBX is used by implementation consultants to deliver fit-to-standard workshops to customer experts with the purpose of gathering configuration and customization requirement data.

Development system is used for configuration and development of customizations and integrations. Once completed, these are transported to the quality system for testing.

Configuration from the Development system is transported to the quality system where testing is performed before anything is transported to production.

Configuration from the quality system is transported to production system. The production system is used day-to-day to run the customer's business activities.

When deploying an SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition scenario, SAP activates the Best Practices process inside of the system through the technical service provided to the customer by SAP. Configuration Best Practices are only activated once in the development system. Transports are used to provide the quality and production systems with the business configuration defined in the development system.

The Best Practices documentation is available in SAP Cloud ALM. When customizing SAP Best Practices to a customer's requirements, do not edit the SAP Best Practices directly. Make a copy and edit the copy. Additional customer-specific content and supporting documentation is also created and maintained in Solution Documentation.

When deploying an all-SAP solution, it is important to stick to the Clean Core concept, to foster a cloud mindset by adhering to fit-to-standard and agile deployment detailed in SAP Activate. These include:

1. Foster a cloud mindset by adhering to fit-to-standard and Agile deployment detailed in SAP Activate

   • Leverage SAP Standard processes where possible

   • Deploy your solution incrementally with short releases and sprints

2. Use preconfigured solutions with defined processes: Use SAP Best Practices, Enterprise Management Layer and/or partner templates

3. Use modern integration technologies

   • Use APIs for integration

   • Use SAP Business Technology Platform functionality for cloud integration

4. Use modern extensibility technologies

   • Use SAP S/4HANA key user extensibility for in-app extensions

   • Develop customer extensions in side-by-side approach using the SAP Business Technology Platform

   • Leverage business logic extensibility within in-app extensibility. Avoid classic coding enhancements (for example enhancement points, BADI's, user exit and so on) where possible.

   • No SAP standard source code modifications.

5. Ensure transparency on deviations

   • Any deviation must be clearly documented as part of the implementation. This helps the customer to replace these with standard capabilities, if they are offered in the future.

   • Use standard capabilities of SAP application life-cycle management tools to document the solution.

Customers that adhere to these principles realize the following benefits:

• Faster time to value
• Lower cost of initial deployment
• Ability to absorb innovation delivered by SAP at a faster rate
• Lower risk during the deployment of the solution
• Higher flexibility and lower reliance on one implementation partner
• Deployment of future-proof solution utilizing modern technologies

The above are the benefits and/or advantages of adhering to the golden rules.

When compared to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud implementation, SAP Fiori deployment is an additional consideration for new implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition. Depending on the type and scope of contract, there are certain activities with respect to SAP Fiori deployment that the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud team may undertake, and there may be activities that the project team may have to do. For example, deployment of SAP Fiori apps may be done by the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud team, or it may fall within the scope of the project team. The activities that the project team must take care of should be clarified with the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud team, and must be implemented by following the high-level plan for the UX track in an implementation as shown here.

However, in comparison to the new implementation of SAP S/4HANA on-premise, the project team should work with the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud contact to determine the scope, process, lead time, and so on, for performing some of the configuration and update activities. For example, activating SAP Fiori apps or applying SAP Notes. This kind of co-ordination and dependency is an additional consideration compared to SAP S/4HANA on-premise implementation, as some activities like using the Software Update Manager tool are SAP’s responsibility when deploying a cloud-based solution.

It is important to read through the roles and responsibilities document to understand the role of the customer and the role of SAP when deploying SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition. There are several services which are delivered by SAP under the agreement, as well as additional services that can be requested, some of which carry related costs.